Academic

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: New York Times: Is Law School A Losing Game? Mr. Wallerstein, w?

By Glenn Reynolds

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: New York Times: Is Law School A Losing Game?

Mr. Wallerstein, who can?t afford to pay down interest and thus watches the outstanding loan balance grow, is in roughly the same financial hell as people who bought more home than they could afford during the real estate boom. But creditors can?t foreclose on him because he didn?t spend the money on a house.

He spent it on a law degree. And from every angle, this now looks like a catastrophic investment.

Well, every angle except one: the view from law schools. To judge from data that law schools collect, and which is published in the closely parsed U.S. News and World Report annual rankings, the prospects of young doctors of jurisprudence are downright rosy.

In reality, and based on every other source of information, Mr. Wallerstein and a generation of J.D.?s face the grimmest job market in decades.

Going to law school isn’t necessarily a bad idea. Going heavily into debt to go to law school is, unless maybe you get into Yale. And even there, it’s iffier than it was. Plus this: “student loans have always been the financial equivalent of chronic illnesses because there is no legal way to shake them.”

UPDATE: Some related thoughts from John Ragosta.

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on January 10, 2011 (boomark / email).